According to Kendall, the symptoms can include overheating, irregular
heartbeat and loss of consciousness.

"Seven per cent of Caucasians lack the enzyme that sort of breaks it
down in the body, so this is why one person can react and the six
other people who took it, nothing happens to them," he said,
explaining the dangerous nature of the chemical.

According to Kendall, the presence of PMMA in ecstasy tablets and
powders is likely a deliberate contamination of the substance to
either save money or to ease the process of production.

"So there's some discussion whether you could make PMMA by mistake if
you weren't a very good chemist," he said. "I think that's probably
very difficult to do."

In Burnaby and Vancouver, forensic drug chemists like Richard Laing
with Health Canada are working to understand the drug and the new
threat it poses to users.

As manager of drug analysis with Health Canada's lab in Burnaby, Laing
said the laboratory's first observation of PMMA in a sample of ecstasy
was made Jan. 13, 2012.

"It's very novel, it's very unique and we haven't seen this here
prior," Laing said.

The chemist said the substance is likely created in clandestine labs
and has links to a chemical called para-methoxy-amphetamine or PMA.

"When we started seeing ecstasy on a regular basis in our lab 10 years
ago, a little bit more than that even, we saw relatively high purity
ecstasy tablets," Laing said.

From a typical concentration of 100mg per tablet, the actual MDMA
content has dropped to levels of 65 to 70mg, with impurities making up
the rest of the samples, Laing said.

In the recent sample, Laing said the lab found PMMA to be the majority
component with a smaller concentration of MDMA present. He added that
it remains too soon to speculate on the typical distribution of the
substance.

"Because it's novel, it presents a lot of problems for us," Laing
said.